ronald reagan won the presidency in 1980 by building a coalition of conservative democrats who are a lot of evangelicals and it is hard to imagine people voting for democrats, if the republican party moves toward the middle. but i think the argument of social conservatives people like ralph reid is that this is the base of the republican party. the activist, the people who actually do the work and do the volunteering. that's how you win elections. >> bill: michael let me ask you, you've written about this, too. do you think the republican party can ever shed the evangelicals or do they want to? at what price do they pay for keeping them? >> i think the republican party is going to have to shed them. maybe not in 2016. i think they'll embrace same-sex marriage. they'll lose a lot of evangelicals. >> bill: where are they going to go? >> they're going to stay home. not en masse, not all of them but their participation in electoral politics will be reduced. people think that everything that exists now is some kind of permanent thing that has existed forever. evangelicals have only been i